February 7, 2015

"I believe Gov. Walker would prefer if this became another red vs. blue fight because polarization will make him look strong in Iowa, and polarized fights are fights he knows he can win."

"If he didn't want protests, why else would he actively talk about getting rid of shared governance; why else would his staff attempt to remove the Wisconsin Idea from the UW's mission? Both of those are throwing gasoline on a fire, an attempt to stop Democrats and Republicans from talking because talking just might lead to a better solution."

Paranoia strikes deep.

79 comments:

Curious George said...

"...it is really tempting to go march on the Capitol. Dig the blue fist shirts from the back of the closet, polish the old vuvuzela.

However, that is the wrong move this time around."

Yes, last time it was a brilliant strategy. Hence the successful recall of all those state senators, and of Walker, and Kloppenberg on the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

Drago said...

Have we reached the (inevitable) point in this "crisis" where Robert Cook pops by to claim that mastermind Karl Rove is behind the changes to the "Wisconsin Idea" submitted by the Walker admin as a means to make the left look as batshit crazy as they really are?

tim in vermont said...

Did they manage to work in "scrofulous"?

Curious George said...

"But even a moderate reduction in the massive $300 million budget cut will prevent some layoffs, maintain more services and reduce the inevitable tuition spike of 2017."

Wait, what's missing from this list? Oh, quality education. Ground breaking research.

By the way, when was the last time the UW didn't raise tuition well above the rate of inflation where they didn't have a freeze imposed on them?

Five years ago? Ten years ago? Here is their tuition cost versus inflation for the last 25 years.

https://scontent-a-sjc.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xaf1/v/t1.0-9/10659162_1031752080175368_924907294507494381_n.jpg?oh=46f0203691c44a2744a4125d88c4250a&oe=5560703F

tim in vermont said...

Don't protest, reach out to Republicans

Yeah, why not reach out to the "Tea Tards"?

SteveR said...

"Both of those are throwing gasoline on a fire, an attempt to stop Democrats and Republicans from talking because talking just might lead to a better solution."

That type of elevated rhetoric only means that the Republicans need to accept our solution. The "better solution" only comes from the Democrats.

chickelit said...

Paranoia strikes deep.

Nobody's right if everybody's wrong

rehajm said...

Testing the fences to find where to attack.

cubanbob said...

Higher tuition or a pay cut for the UW staff? Higher taxes for taxpayers or a pay cut for UW staff? Lets phrase the question correctly.

Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...

The obvious solution here is to close down the UW law school. According to Instapundit law schools are just glorified Ponzi schemes. Let's do it. See if any one notices.

tim in vermont said...

Somebody's rice bowl threatened ARM?

Ann Althouse said...

"Higher tuition or a pay cut for the UW staff? Higher taxes for taxpayers or a pay cut for UW staff? Lets phrase the question correctly."

Pay cuts are not permissible. That's why Governor Doyle came up with that phony-baloney "furlough" plan. We all took the equivalent of a pay cut, and we were forbidden to work on certain designated days, and yet there was no reduction in the workload. We elected a new governor who has seriously undertaken to solve the budget problems, but the people at the UW seem to prefer the old phony stopgap, perhaps because Doyle was a Democrat, and it's all so partisan. Ironically, UW folk are up in arms over the (temporary) deletion of the statutory phrase "Basic to every purpose of the system is the search for truth." Hardcore partisanship throws a fit over the deletion of a lie about truth.

Seeing Red said...

Are there republicans in Madison to talk to? How would they find them?

Michael K said...

I'm not sure this argument will appeal to anyone who has a kid going to UW or who recently graduated to who wants to go there.

My daughter went to U of Arizona and every year tuition went up a lot. Thousands. She was nonresident, of course. The U of Cal is accepting nonresidents over residents now to get the out-of-state tuition.

How about laying off 200 diversity consultants and staff ? Maybe from the Womyn's studies department.

Big Mike said...

Glad to see someone else remembers Buffalo Springfield. Though this time around the "man with a gun over there" worships Allah.

But I understand your comment above, Althouse. No one in the history of UW-Mad (what a wonderful acronym!) ever had a typo or accidentally deleted a phrase from something they planned to publish. Nope. Never happened. On account of their hearts are pure.

garage mahal said...

Walker is on video talking to a billionaire donor of his plans to "divide and conquer". But it's just paranoia, libtards.

tim in vermont said...

Solidarity! Eh Garage?

Gahrie said...

Walker is on video talking to a billionaire donor of his plans to "divide and conquer"

Something, of course, that no lefty has ever done.

chickelit said...

AReasonableMan said...The obvious solution here is to close down the UW law school. According to Instapundit law schools are just glorified Ponzi schemes. Let's do it. See if any one notices.

What the State taketh away, the State can give back.

Are Law School admissions really up? How about the UW Medical School? Why can't there be temporary adjustments, hiring freezes, cut backs in the diversity police force? You guys are starting to sound like the Greeks.

Is the notion that the UW is like a shark being tested or what?

chickelit said...

garage mahal said...Walker is on video talking to a billionaire donor of his plans to "divide and conquer". But it's just paranoia, libtards.

Better put that video on heavy rotation pronto, garage...no fair holding it back!

cubanbob said...

@Ann "pay cuts are not permissible" but tax and tuition hikes are. Therein lies the problem. Some wallets are more sacred than others.

kjbe said...

I don't know where you're getting "the people at the UW seem to prefer the old phony stopgap, perhaps because Doyle was a Democrat" - everybody was complaining about the furloughs. and I don't recall anyone backing Doyle on this, so you're "hardcore patrician" doesn't apply. His popularity among dems was not what you might want to think.

CG, your chart is nice, but State contributions to the UW System have been going down for over a decade (check Fig. 3) with tuition going up:

http://www.wiscape.wisc.edu/docs/wiscapedocuments/pb003.pdf?sfvrsn=3

Alex said...

The Walker Divide & Conquer Video

Ouch, that's really bad.

Big Mike said...

@garage, flash message to you. It's not paranoia. Everybody really does hate you, and if Governor Walker rides that hatred into the White House, you have no one to blame but yourself.

Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...

Big Mike said...
@garage, flash message to you. It's not paranoia. Everybody really does hate you,


I don't.

In fact most people seem to like garage. He comes across as a pretty light hearted guy.

khesanh0802 said...

It's tough when you run out of other people's money. Certainly UW is not the only school guilty of being overstaffed, overpaid and underworked.
I saw the edited statement of purpose somewhere (here, earlier?) and thought it gained a lot from being edited; it lost no meaning and was much more focused. Certainly striking the BS about the search for "truth" was appropriate.

Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...

Country People/Lawyer
US: P/L:265
Brazil: P/L: 326
New Zealand: P/L 391
Spain Lawyers: P/L:395
Italy: P/L:488
UK P/L401
Germany P/L: 593
France P/L: 1,403

The cheese eating surrender monkeys seem to do a much better job controlling the lawyer population than we do. I guess we could consider culling. Otherwise we need to clear their breeding grounds.

This could be Walker's out - 'I closed the UW Law School for the sake of the economy'.

chickelit said...

In fact most people seem to like garage. He comes across as a pretty light hearted guy.

I don't hate garage either; I hate what he does.

Sinner/sin

chickelit said...

OMG, that video is a game changer!

Curious George said...

"garage mahal said...
Walker is on video talking to a billionaire donor of his plans to "divide and conquer". But it's just paranoia, libtards."

The divide and conquer was in regard to the public unions from the WI Democratic party. Mission accomplished.

But keep running that up the flagpole. Because it became public before the Walker recall, and you were crushed, and the Walker re-election, where you were crushed again. I'm sure at some point it will get traction.

Gusty Winds said...

How come the intellectual elite can't figure out how to operate with 2.5% less? Maybe A brilliant 150 IQ committee could figure it out, and try to stop strapping middle class kids with so much debt.

It costs $25K to $30K a year to be taught by a grad student. What a joke. Walker knows it, and so does Wisconsin.

Curious George said...

"AReasonableMan said...

The cheese eating surrender monkeys seem to do a much better job controlling the lawyer population than we do."

"We" could do a better job of that if the Democratic Party didn't fight tooth and nail against every reform, while imposing both laws and regulations that are the mother's milk of the legal profession.

Gusty Winds said...

The more the faculty whines, the less sympathy they will recieve. The Boomerang generation sits at mom and dad's house after graduation trying to beat back debt, and wondering what it is they just paid for. This all just further exposes liberal profs and high paid university administrators as unsympathetic, selfish, hypocrites.

Gusty Winds said...

Don't give us full control of our own organization. Someone might find out we really don't know what the Fuck we're doing, and couldn't run a hot dog stand in the private sector.

Gusty Winds said...

This also reminds me of all the bitching and moaning of the Harvard faculty after being introduced to co-pays and deductibles in their health covoverage recently.

Cry babies lack self awareness.

Larry J said...

Perhaps Governor Walker needs to call a meeting with the Democrats and tell them simply, "I won."

Drago said...

AReasonableMeltdown: "This could be Walker's out - 'I closed the UW Law School for the sake of the economy'"

So that's the newest "I can see Russia from my house" tactic of the left?

To assert a 2.5% cut annually for 2 years amounts to closing the UW Law School?

I've noticed you've included that assertion in at least 2 posts.

Why don't you just up the ante on the hilarity by stating Walker needs the cash to set up prison work camps for union employees?

mccullough said...

Spend $150,000 on what you could learn in $1.50 of overdue library book fines.

Capabilities matter, not credentials.

MeatPopscicle1234 said...

@mccullough - great movie line... to bad Matt Damon is such a leftist kool-aid drinker. He has such a man crush on Zinn.

Gusty Winds said...

At Eastern Illinois University in the early 90's, we had full profs/phds teaching freshman and sophomore year classes. My friends an hour north at the U of I didn't see professors in classes till junior and senior year.

U of I was double the tuition cost vs EIU, and their first two years were taught by 24-year-olds.

I wonder if the same exists in Madison vs Whitewater, Oshkosh, LaCrosse etc...where tuition is cheaper.

n.n said...

Chromophobia. Yeah, it's real, and highly partisan. What the psychiatrists giveth, they also taketh away. Send or spend more money!

chickelit said...

U of I was double the tuition cost vs EIU, and their first two years were taught by 24-year-olds.

I wonder if the same exists in Madison vs Whitewater, Oshkosh, LaCrosse etc...where tuition is cheaper.


UW Madison still had full Profs lecturing undergraduate chemistry in the early '80's when I was there. In-state tuition was about $420 per semester.

What happened?

Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...

Drago said...
To assert a 2.5% cut annually for 2 years amounts to closing the UW Law School?


They need to sack someone. The cleanest way to do this would be to close down a department or school. There are 13 schools at UW. Law would be one of the smaller ones. Closing it should cover the 2.5% cut, with some change that they could spend hiring some productive faculty. Win-win.

furious_a said...

Bitter-clinging divide-and-conquer Amerikkka worked for Obama, so why not?

buwaya said...

Some of the international differentials amount to what they use law degrees for. France for instance has schools explicitly devoted to training bureaucrats. In many cases they have those people where in the US one would hire someone with a law degree.
Still, there is no doubt the US has far too many lawyers, and as documented on instapundit daily enrollment is collapsing and the weaker schools are under great stress.
The article is correct in that the rational and responsible approach is to determine what cuts can be made within the comfort zone of the institution and its internal stakeholders and make a counteroffer. However it does not seem that the institution or its internal stakeholders have the emotional stability and discipline for this.

furious_a said...

They need to sack someone.

Start with the time-clock bandits who used their phony doctors' notes to get paid while marching on the Capitol.

buwaya said...

ARM is correct, though perhaps too arch in his proposal.
Every school, program and process in the institution should be evaluated for whether its paying its way, whether they are essential to the work process (keep the custodians, dump the diversity consultants) and general interest in terms of enrollment.
UC is long overdue for such a housecleaning too, and I speak as longtime repeat customer.

Drago said...

AReasonableMeltdown: "The cleanest way to do this would be to close down a department or school."

Says you.

Drago said...

chickelit: "UW Madison still had full Profs lecturing undergraduate chemistry in the early '80's when I was there. In-state tuition was about $420 per semester."

My first MS degree included a refresher course (Calculus/DiffEQ) taught by none other than Richard Hamming.

That was just one of the benefits of attending this particular institution where the "price of admission" for fully funding a professors research was the requirement for those professors to actually teach the courses required in the departments.

Of course, we ended up calling it "Hamming on Hamming" since he would simply ask us if we had any background questions, we would answer "no" (of course) and then Hamming would opine on whatever interested him for the next 90 minutes.

Most compelling class I ever took since there was no limit to what was discussed from a position of true insight by the good professor.

Drago said...

buwaya puti: "ARM is correct, though perhaps too arch in his proposal."

I'm not challenging the proposal itself. I'm challenging how it is being couched by ARMeltdown.

Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...

chickelit said...
In-state tuition was about $420 per semester.

What happened?


A steady decline in state funding made up for with increased tuition. It's one or the other. The research side of the campus probably just covers costs, at best.

machine said...

such a miserable basement....

Drago said...

machine: "such a miserable basement..."

Why don't you move out? What's stopping you?

buwaya said...

The same phenomenon has afflicted all US universities.
Costs have increased beyond the rate of state revenue growth or economic growth for that matter. The root of this is probably an increase in staffing per enrolled student, and most if not all of this growth, as usually reported, is non-teaching staff.
Since states generally have to live within their means via a vis taxes, subsidies for higher education have to compete with other public expenditures such as K-12 education, health care and public employee compensation, all of which have been getting more expensive faster than revenue growth as well.

buwaya said...

To correct ARM,
At least across the US, and probably WI as well,
There has been no steady decline in state funding in an absolute sense; the proportion of state funding vs university costs has fallen as costs have increased much faster than revenue growth, in competition with other public expenditures that have also grown faster than revenues.
That is the problem. Fix the cost growth problem, and restore the efficiencies of previous years, and this problem can be solved.

State funding rates cannot be seen in isolation save for the purpose of empty rhetoric, which is beneath us all.

Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...

buwaya puti said...
To correct ARM,
At least across the US, and probably WI as well,
There has been no steady decline in state funding in an absolute sense


This does not appear to be true. According to this data there has been a steady decline in state funding in constant dollars. I can't find a description of how the constant dollars were calculated so there may be some wiggle room there.

buwaya said...

The problem with the Atlantic chart is right there on it- its per student, and they have the student number growth rate on the chart. Its not dealing with total funding, which if you multiply any part of which x student numbers you will see constant growth even on an inflation adjusted basis.
And as best I can tell it leaves out other college revenues, state and federal (which are very difficult to gather BTW due to the vast array of funding sources).

ken in tx said...

I think garage is talking about the prank caller who called Walker pretending to be one of the Koch brothers, and recorded the call. Walker politely went along with the conversation but didn't say anything particularly damaging to himself.

Obviously, Walker did not know the Koch brothers or this prank would not have worked.

Birkel said...

The problem of tuition price increases is the same as that of insurance premium increases. Price is the feedback mechanism by which discipline is imposed, but only if the purchaser of the good/service experiences the pain of price immediately. By disconnecting the consumer from price, we observe the sorts of price spirals Liberals decry and that were caused by the policies they initially championed.

That much is true. And no Liberal policy so far suggested does anything about the underlying mechanism. Oh well.

Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...

buwaya puti said...
The problem with the Atlantic chart is right there on it- its per student, and they have the student number growth rate on the chart.


I don't see why this is a problem the growth in student numbers is unlikely to have exceeded the rate of growth in GDP.

It is the education cost per student that counts if we are measuring the contribution or lack thereof of the state to their education.

Laslo Spatula said...

My take about people making comments of the like of 'closing the UW law school' are that they are being both precious and passive-agressive at Althouse, an attempt to shame her, a part of the law school, for supporting Walker.

They keep dangling the bait hoping she will respond to the specific hypothetical (law school as opposed to, say, a social studies arena) so that they can get a perceived 'Gotcha' moment that they will hammer at ad infinitum.

As rhhardin might say, soap opera technique.

I am Laslo.

garage mahal said...

Attacking the UW System and smart pointy head people is a great way to drum up support from the knuckledraggers out of state needed to secure the nomination. Walker doesn't need Wisconsin any longer. The tribes and locals killed his signature job plan, the idiotic and poorly thought out plan of a 21 mile long Taconite mine in the Penokees. Time to light it all on fire now. What other potential GOP presidential hopeful can say they royally fucked an education system in their state like Walker has?

Unknown said...

--"Basic to every purpose of the system is the search for truth." Hardcore partisanship throws a fit over the deletion of a lie about truth.--

Nicely played!

Unknown said...

---A steady decline in state funding made up for with increased tuition.---


You left out administrative bloat.


At the University of Wisconsin – Madison, the number of full-time administrators ?per 100 students increased by 32 percent between 1993 and 2007, while full-time employees engaged ?in instruction, research, and service increased by only 5 percent.

UW-Madison, the UW System’s flagship university, employs 14.4 full-time ?administrators per 100 students, compared to only 7.4 teachers and researchers.

At the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee the number of full-time administrators per 100 ?students grew by 2 percent between 1993 and 2007, while the number of full-time teachers, ?researchers, and service-providers actually declined by 3 percent.

UWM employs 3.6 full-time administrators per 100 students, compared to 3.5 teachers and researchers.


Nationally, between 1993 and 2007, the number of full-time administrators per 100 students at America’s leading universities grew by 39 percent, while the number of employees engaged in teaching, research or service only grew by 18 percent.

http://www.maciverinstitute.com/2010/08/administrative-bloat-study-includes-uw-uwm/

Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...

Unknown said...
You left out administrative bloat.


Not deliberately. I think we can all agree that admin bloat is a bad thing.

Unknown said...

----What other potential GOP presidential hopeful can say they royally fucked an education system in their state like Walker has?----

Yawn, another day another lie from Garbage. You would think you would learn something from Brian Wiliams.

MADISON (AP) – Reading and math scores for most Wisconsin public school students increased slightly on tests administered last fall,

http://fox11online.com/2014/04/08/wisconsin-reading-math-scores-up-slightly/

Graduation rates are up under walker…”"That 88 percent rate was tied for second-best in the country along with Nebraska, Texas and Vermont. Iowa topped the list at 89 percent, DPI reported.””

Politifact - Mostly true

http://www.politifact.com/wisconsin/statements/2014/jun/08/scott-walker/scott-walker-says-wisconsin-graduation-rates-and-t/

Unknown said...

--I think we can all agree that admin bloat is a bad thing.--

Good, so we can all wait to see how the U W system manages a 3 percent cut - just like countless organization do.

In my experience organizations with too much money run worse than those with appropriate amounts.

buwaya said...

Unknown has it exactly right.
There is plenty of fat to trim all over these systems.

buwaya said...

I beleve the graduation rate, etc. is for K-12.

Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...

Laslo Spatula said...
My take about people making comments of the like of 'closing the UW law school' are that they are being both precious and passive-agressive at Althouse, an attempt to shame her, a part of the law school, for supporting Walker.


Well, I was going to suggest that UW should only sack those faculty who voted for Walker but, leaving aside the fundamentally anti-democratic nature of this suggestion, I wasn't sure this mechanism would produce a full 2.5 percent cut in salary costs. Possibly only Althouse loses her job under this proposal. Closing the law school, on the other hand, has significant redeeming social value.

Achilles said...

AReasonableMan said...
chickelit said...
In-state tuition was about $420 per semester.

What happened?

"A steady decline in state funding made up for with increased tuition. It's one or the other. The research side of the campus probably just covers costs, at best."

Tuition is going up because of Federal Financial Aid subsidies. If you give young people a giant credit card with no limit so they can experience college the price of college is going to go up. States are just mooching. They know if they cut funding to colleges the college will just jack tuition and nobody will complain because they just up financial aid costs.

chickelit said...

That sounds like a Ponzi scheme to me, Achilles.

Who are the bagholders?

tim in vermont said...

Well, I was going to suggest that UW should only sack those faculty who voted for Walker but, leaving aside the fundamentally anti-democratic nature of this suggestion, I wasn't sure this mechanism would produce a full 2.5 percent cut in salary costs.

Leaving Althouse out of this, is it so difficult to imagine why universities don't have the kind of popular support ARM wants?

tim in vermont said...

. I think we can all agree that admin bloat is a bad thing. - ARM

But whatever we do, let's not look into the causes of it and continue to support politicians who use their power to try to create their perfect society through regulation of campuses. You know, "The Wisconsin Idea."

Of course regulations are free and don't cause administrative bloat. Right ARM?

tim in vermont said...

In fact most people seem to like garage. He comes across as a pretty light hearted guy.

Stopped clock and all.

tim in vermont said...

the Department of Education has very forcefully told schools to handle sexual grievances themselves and given them very detailed instructions about how to do so. A report last year from a White House task force on campus sexual assault underscored the importance to a university of following that advice. Even though the D.O.E.’s instructions are presented as recommendations rather than law, its Office for Civil Rights can put any school that fails to follow them on the list of colleges under investigation and even take away its federal funding. -- The New York Times

So is Obama to blame for burdening university budgets and creating administrative bloat?

OF COURSE NOT! Bad debate tactics!

Curious George said...

"Unknown said...
----What other potential GOP presidential hopeful can say they royally fucked an education system in their state like Walker has?----

Yawn, another day another lie from Garbage. You would think you would learn something from Brian Wiliams.

MADISON (AP) – Reading and math scores for most Wisconsin public school students increased slightly on tests administered last fall,

http://fox11online.com/2014/04/08/wisconsin-reading-math-scores-up-slightly/

Graduation rates are up under walker…”"That 88 percent rate was tied for second-best in the country along with Nebraska, Texas and Vermont. Iowa topped the list at 89 percent, DPI reported.””

garage, like the author of the article in question, measure educational success not by outcomes, but by incomes. Of the teachers. Union leaders. And of course Democratic campaign coffers.

Rusty said...

Something tells me that the math, science, and engineering departments aren't worried at all.

Big Mike said...

Closing the law school, on the other hand, has significant redeeming social value.

Someone's been reading his Shakespeare! Or had it read to him.

Put down the crayons, ARM.